My name is M. C. McGrath. I am a student at Boston University who is taking the Intro to Civic Media class this fall. I have been around the Media Lab a bit for the past three years as a research intern in Affective Computing but lately I have gotten quite interested in the work of the Civic Media group. These past two years I have gotten involved in the free information and Occupy movements. I am one of the founders of a nonprofit called Civic Counsel that creates technology to promote civic engagement, makes tools for activists, and teaches people how to use the tools we create and others.
I chose to take this course because I am interested in the intersections of media, technology, civic engagement, transparency, and social movements. I am fascinated by most of the course content but there are two areas of particular interest. First, how high-tech media can be used to promote civic engagement and understanding. Second, the role of the media in transparency, whistleblowing, and leaking and how this is affected by the Internet.
During the class, I would like to explore the above topics and others. Additionally, I hope to identify some new areas of interest within civic media. Possibly the most important thing I hope to gain from the course is a better understanding of how to make useful civic media tools. I have been working on a few related projects but I am fairly new to this area so I have a lot to learn. I would also like to learn about more civic media tools that are already available.
In the first class, we used the 10 points tool made by Charlie DeTar to outline and decide upon the ten principles of civic media. The whole class spent a long time working on this but we could not come to a consensus. In large part, I think this was due to the limited nature of the communication between people in the class. We were in the same room but we had split up into groups of four people with which we would decide on changes and additions to the ten points as well as which points we would support. Each group added, edited, and supported points. For the most part, we only talked within our group, although we did have a few limited full-group conversations. These were useful but not enough to decide on the ten core principles of civic media.
The workshop was made harder by the anonymity (or pseudonymity if icons are considered pseudonyms) of each group and individual. Each group was represented by an icon on the screen. It was possible to eventually figure out what icon went with each group and go talk to the group but it was still difficult to know which individuals in a group objected to a statement or insisted on particular wording unless they spoke up. It did not help that aside from the times we stopped typing to talk to the rest of the class, most groups did not talk to other groups directly. This excercise would have been much easier had more groups discussed the issues with the principles more often.
I already knew that reaching consensus could be difficult and frustrating from experiences in Occupy and Civic Counsel meetings. Still, everyone editing the ten principles with little communication outside of that took consensus to an even higher level of difficulty; at least in a general assembly or meeting there can be more back and forth communication. If we had just used the 10 points tool and had not stopped for class discussion a few times, we might not have reached consensus on even the two points we finally agreed on.
I personally think the following are the three key and ideal principles of civic media. They are not the only attributes to strive for but I believe they are the most important.
1. Civic media promotes engagement, participation, and action.
2. Civic media increases transparency, accountability, and openness.
3. Civic media fits the needs of the community.
Civic media will be useless if it does not fit the needs of the community. If I had to choose just one principle of civic media it would be that. A close second is that civic media promotes engagement, participation, and action. In class we discussed how civic media could be defined as the intersection of participatory media and civic action. Both of these areas relate to engagement, participation, and action. Understanding the needs of the community makes civic media useful but promoting engagement is really the essence of civic media. For citizens to be engaged and active, they must have a clear understanding of the current situation. Part of their engagement could even be shedding light on societal problems. Still, citizens must be informed to be fully engaged. Thus, civic media must also encourage transparency and openness as much as possible.
Between the Bars, a blogging platform for prisoners, is a civic media project that I think satisfies all three principles I set forth above. The main goal is to provide a place for prisoners to tell their stories publicly and interact with those who read their posts. This is very clearly a form of engagement and participation which is much needed in an environment with limited opportunity for engagement with the outside world. By giving prisoners a voice and a potentially wide audience, Between the Bars promotes openness and transparency in the prison system. Prisoners can write about problems with the system and be heard. Between the Bars does not stop at giving prisoners a place to discuss issues. It also runs campaigns to help tackle problems in the prison system, like the high cost of phone calls for inmates, and engages prisoners in those campaigns. This definitely shows that Between the Bar takes the needs of the community into account.
I look forward to learning more about civic media. I think this will be one of the most interesting classes I have taken and am very happy to have the chance to take it.